Antlia, the Air Pump, is a faint southern constellation named for a laboratory instrument, a handful of dim stars that hardly hold together as a figure.
At a glance
| stars in the figure | 3 |
|---|---|
| nearest star of the figure | Iota Antliae, 190 light-years (58.3 pc) |
| farthest star of the figure | Epsilon Antliae, 711 light-years (218 pc) |
| depth | the farthest is 3.7 × farther than the nearest |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with.
About Antlia
Antlia is one of the constellations created by the French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille, who mapped the southern sky from the Cape of Good Hope and filled its unnamed gaps with the instruments of science and art. He chose the air pump, the device that first let experimenters empty a vessel of air. There is no myth behind it and no ancient figure; it is a label for a patch of sky.
The figure is only a short line of faint stars. Its brightest, Alpha Antliae, is an orange giant, and nothing in the group is easy to see from a city. It lies between the long body of Hydra and the sails of Vela, best placed in the evening during the southern autumn, which is the northern spring, and low on the horizon from Europe.
What you see in the piece
Turn on CONSTELLATIONS and fly out: Iota Antliae, the nearest star of the line, stays close while Epsilon Antliae lies much deeper, so the short line that looks straight from Earth turns into a slanting chain pointing away from the Sun.
Questions
How far away are the stars of Antlia?
The nearest star of the figure is Iota Antliae, 190 light-years (58.3 pc) away; the farthest is Epsilon Antliae, 711 light-years (218 pc), so the farthest is 3.7 × farther than the nearest.
Why is it called the Air Pump?
Lacaille named it after the air pump, one of the scientific instruments he used to fill the southern sky with new constellations.